


Have Yourself a Merry Little Blizzard

by Frea_O



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Abandoned Cabin in the Woods, Blizzards & Snowstorms, F/M, Gift Exchange, Huddling For Warmth, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity and Oliver get away, but get snowed in. Huddling up for warmth is totally something that’s acceptable with your boss, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Yourself a Merry Little Blizzard

“Oh, this is not happening, this is not happening, this is _so_ not happening,” Felicity said under her breath. She’d stopped feeling her fingers twenty minutes ago, her toes ten minutes before that, and the way this night was going, it would be a long time before feeling returned in either of those, and this really sucked. She hated being cold. “This is not happening.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said, his voice very even. “This is happening.”

“I know, but if I say it more—”

“You’ll have said it fifteen times,” Oliver said pleasantly.

“Really? That many? And—wait, you counted?”

“It’s either count or think about how cold I am.” Oliver was shivering, Felicity realized. She knew this because she was pressed up against his side, mostly because a) he always radiated heat and b) his muscled mass was actually somewhat decent of a wind-block, if she was going to be at all honest. But then, she should have expected that he could feel the cold much worse than she did; the island he’d been stranded on had been pretty tropical. And it wasn’t like the kidnappers, all of whom were unconscious and would stay that way for a long time, had seen fit to kidnap them in anything more than what they’d been wearing in the office that day.

At least she’d worn something with sleeves, though her knees were like little blocks of ice, so cold that they burned. Her boots were slightly better for wilderness trekking than most of her pumps, but it didn’t really matter much. They’d escaped the bad guys and they were probably still going to die, out in the middle of nowhere. The warehouse had been hours outside of Starling City and it was all snow and woods out here. And snow was still coming down.

“We’re not going to die,” Oliver said, and Felicity realized that most of that inner dialogue had just been dialogue. “Just keep walking. We’ll find some place. Lots of people keep cabins out here.”

“But _why_?” Felicity asked. “They are aware places like Aruba exist, aren’t they?”

“Some people like the cold,” Oliver said, laughing.

“Coincidentally, some people are crazy.”

“Well, we’re in luck because look—” Oliver pointed to the trees ahead, where Felicity could barely see a smudge of darkness against the horizon. She envied him that eyesight. She’d probably destroyed hers with all of the late night programming she’d done. “See? We’ll be okay.”

“This is such a cliché,” Felicity said twenty minutes later, when Oliver had broken into the cabin. They’d determined that it was a hunting cabin belonging to Seth and Mary Jones, and Felicity planned to pay them back for the electricity (which she had figured out how to turn on), the shotgun from the cabinet, and especially the space heater (which Oliver had found on his search), but in the meantime, there was nothing to do but call Diggle on the landline and wait to warm up so they didn’t die of hypothermia or anything.

A fire would have been faster, but there was still a chance that their captors could be out looking for them. So they snacked on jerky from the cabinet and left the lights off.

Oliver grinned at her comment. “Felicity says she misses you,” he said into the phone.

“That too,” Felicity said. “But this is still a cliché, getting snowed in in a cabin in the woods.”

Oliver relayed that to Diggle. Felicity could hear him laughing through the line.

“All right,” Oliver said when he hung up. “The blizzard’s shut everything down, but he’s got a friend with a couple of snowmobiles.”

“Really?” Felicity gaped.

“Yeah, they’ll be a couple of hours and they’re bringing a change of clothes. All we have to do is hang tight.” Oliver frowned at where she was crouched next to the space heater. Felicity hadn’t wanted to be near any windows in case their captors came back. So she had tucked herself into a corner to wait while Oliver called Diggle and the snow outside covered up their tracks. But there really wasn’t too much space in the corner.

“Oh,” she said, realizing that. “Here, I can move it somewhere else—”

“Actually, I have an idea.” Before she knew what he was planning, Oliver had stepped _over_ her and he had both hands on her shoulders, to scoot her forward. She froze in a completely new way when he lowered himself along the wall, sitting directly behind her so that she basically had no choice but to lean up against his chest. “Sorry about the invasion of privacy, but I figure we’ll both get warm faster this way.”

“Y-yeah, no, I don’t mind at all.” Felicity was stiff as she gingerly leaned back against Oliver. In reply, he wrapped his arms around her, including her boot-clad calves because she had her legs pulled up to her chest.

Oh, god, this was how half of her fantasies began.

“You can relax, you know,” he said. “I’m not going to try anything untoward.”

“Not gonna play a little boss-secretary while stranded out in the woods, huh? And oh my god—”

Oliver’s entire body shook with laughter. Felicity, on the other hand, turned bright red. She lowered her burning forehead onto her knees in utter humiliation, and flinched. They were still like popsicles. “I’m pretty convinced I did something horrible to my brain when I was little and now it’s just out to sabotage me,” she said without lifting her head.

“I don’t know.” She could feel Oliver leaning back and the sudden lack of his warmth between them had her unconsciously doing the same. “I can’t see you doing something horrible to anybody.”

Felicity twisted to raise an eyebrow at him. His face was really, really close. She turned back around.

“Well, I take that back. I remember what you did to the mailroom kid that messed with your servers.” Oliver rubbed a hand up her shin.

“To be fair, Stan was a jerk. And I only dropped his credit score _a little_ and even if I did, you have no proof—”

“Your knees are frozen solid. I’m going to see if I can find some blankets or something—”

But when Oliver started to get up, Felicity latched onto his wrists. “No, stay.”

“You’re cold.”

“Not for long, and it’ll be even less time if you stay there. You’re really hot—I mean, uh, literally, you’re like a furnace. It’s nice.”

“Well, okay.” Oliver put his hands over her knees and they were a little cold, but Felicity was definitely not going to protest. “But you have to relax. Your shoulder blades are stabbing me a little.”

“Oh! Sorry.” Ironically, that only made her tense more until she took several deep breaths. She’d hugged Oliver a few times— _thank god you’re alive!_ was a great excuse for that—and there were those lingering touches that made her wonder if things weren’t exactly as platonic as they seemed, and sure, grabbing onto him while swinging across an elevator shaft occasionally came up in their line of work, but there had never been something like this before. Felicity couldn’t deny that even though leaning against him was like being against a very warm rock wall, this was incredibly nice.

Or it was incredibly nice for about twenty minutes. But the captors had smashed their cell phones and she didn’t even have Candy Crush to keep her company, just Oliver’s breathing and the quiet while they waited for either rescue or for the bad guys to find them.

Finally, she broke. “I’m bored.”

“But you’re warmer, at least,” Oliver said.

“True. How long do you think it’ll take them to reach us?”

“At least another couple hours. You could try to take a nap or something. I’ll keep watch.”

“I’m too keyed up to sleep.”

“Well, then, here, open your present.” Oliver shifted a little, his hand leaving her knee (oh thank god she’d shaved that morning, though it had been a near thing) and the cold rushing in right to that spot, of course. He held up a small, flat package.

“They took everything else, but left that in your pocket?” Felicity asked, gawking and temporarily forgetting that she didn’t celebrate Christmas.

“I don’t think it would have helped us escape,” Oliver said, a smile in his voice. “I know you don’t celebrate, so just consider it a holiday thing.”

“I didn’t bring your gift to our kidnapping. Gosh, now I feel bad.”

“Maybe next one.”

She took the envelope from him. Whatever was inside was definitely not a card or even a gift card. It was something small and it rasped at the paper as she shook the envelope.

“You always shake your Hanukkah presents, too?” Oliver asked.

“Of course, that’s half the fun.” Curious, she opened the envelope and gasped as she pulled out the little piece of card-stock. There were two earrings and a necklace and they were _perfect_ —tiny panda bears with green jewels for eyes. She had a suspicion those were probably actual emeralds, given that this was Oliver Queen, but she was too overwhelmed that he’d gotten her something so perfect for her to really wonder at the price. A smile overtook her face. “Oh, they match my favorite shoes!”

“That was the idea. You like them?”

“I love them! Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She nearly elbowed Oliver in the face when she moved to take her current earrings off. “Ooh—sorry—but, oh, hold that, would you? Thank you. Did you pick these out yourself?”

“Dad,” and Oliver paused a little, his throat working (she’d turned to smile at him), “he used to make me pick up gifts for my mom for him for Christmas. I got really good at shopping for her and Thea and…Laurel.”

“Shopping for women is your superpower?” Felicity asked, and when she thought about that, she found it delightful. It just seemed like something Oliver would be terrible at, but he had all of these hidden pockets and foibles and it was fascinating to see them at work.

Oliver shrugged, looking a little self-conscious. “It’s just about thinking about what the other person wants. You can’t be selfish all the time, I guess.”

“Well, they’re perfect.” Felicity finished putting them in and wished she’d somehow grabbed her purse during the escape, as she really wanted to see how they looked, but she also didn’t want to leave the warmth of Oliver’s grip. “How do I look?”

“Amazing,” Oliver said, smiling at her. He made an ‛oof’ noise when she hugged him, but she figured that was okay because he hugged her back. She pulled back and toyed with the panda on her left earlobe, thrilled. She was going to wear these earrings and necklace with every outfit she could get away with. Who cared if it was probably silly for a CEO’s EA? “Have your teeth stopped chattering yet?”

“You could hear that? Crap,” she said. “And mostly. It’s a little cold.”

“Well,” Oliver said, tightening his grip as she settled back against his chest once more. “Help will be here soon.”

Maybe not too soon, Felicity thought, and was happy she managed to keep that to herself. But maybe it was for the best: it occurred to her five minutes later that she’d picked out cufflinks as his Christmas present. Sure, there was the arrowhead set she’d ordered custom, but as a wild hair, she’d also picked up a pair of bamboo cufflinks because she thought they would help remind him he was past the island.

It was so funny that she grinned—and shivered until Diggle and Lyla arrived on snowmobiles an hour later to rescue them. If he wore the bamboo cufflinks on the day she wore her panda earrings, they would match.

It was so worth getting stuck in the snow for, she decided.


End file.
